Andrew Engelson is the Publisher/Editor of the new venture Cascadia Magazine. He is distributing an email called Cascadia Daily which highlights some of the more compelling news stories from around the bioregion each day. Yesterday he linked to an essay entitled “What Is Cascadia?” In it he described HIS come to Sasquatch moment:

When asked about why I’m interested in the notion of Cascadia, I often talk about a hike I once took to the top of Desolation Peak. It’s a remote mountain in North Cascades National Park, but it can be done as a day-hike. You’ve got to take a boat up Ross Lake to get to the trailhead, and the steep, exposed switchbacks make for a grueling trudge in summer, when the trail is snow-free for a few short months. At the summit is an old Forest Service lookout, famed as the spot where Jack Kerouac spent time scanning for fires, jotting notes, meditating, and getting spooked by the loneliness. The lookout shelter is still there, and on a clear day the panorama is astonishing. All around you are the glaciated peaks of the North Cascades, the jagged summits of Canada’s Coast Range, the ice-cream cone of volcanic Mount Baker. Inside the lookout cabin with windows on all sides, you can still observe the old fire-finder (though it’s no longer used–satellites have made it obsolete). It’s a circular table with a couple of viewfinder sights for pinpointing the location of a fire. On my visit the fire-finder and old map were still intact. Clearly marked about halfway through the map was the Canada-US border on the 49th parallel. And to my surprise, everything north of that line on that map was blank. No topographic lines, no ridges and valleys. Just empty white space. If a fire was burning just a few miles to the north, in that other country, it wasn’t considered the Forest Service’s problem.

Engelson also understands that Cascadia is not:

…a nationalist movement. Rather, it’s an awareness of a region, a biologically significant place. It’s no accident that one of the symbols of the Cascadia bioregion is the Douglas-fir, the massive evergreen tree whose native range overlaps most of Cascadia– from the Skeena River in British Columbia south to Cape Mendocino, California.

I think you’ll see more of this kind of activity emerging as nation states continue their devolution away from people-centric needs. Regardless, understanding of where one lives is critical to our own individual well-being and knowing what is happening here is critical, which makes Cascadia Magazine and Cascadia Daily incredible important efforts.

And Kevin Paul’s humble presence and powerful testimony from Saanish nation was one of the highlights of the whole affair.

Kevin Paul

Once organizers recover, there are plans to do this fest every other year with, perhaps, a smaller event that same weekend in September, featuring more of a communal gathering. If you want to to help organize, or simply attend, contact us.

The Cascadia Poetics Lab would like to invite you to their first Cascadia Poetry Festival in Cumberland, BC, on September 8-10, 2017. SCHEDULE HERE.

Purchase a Gold Pass ($20) for ALL EVENTS and reserve your space at the workshop now at: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3054895 (Workshop registration is limited to 20 and is extra.) There is also some lodging space available in the Riding Fool Hostel for the festival. To inquire call Adelia (Nicola) MacWilliam at (250) 891.9163.

The Cascadia Poetry Festival will be staged in Cumberland, BC, September 8-10, 2017, featuring Jan Zwicky of Quadra Island, Stephen Collis of Delta, Paul Nelson of Seattle, Lucia Lisch of Vancouver, Natalie Nickerson of Cumberland and others to be announced.